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The University of Southampton
Engineering

Southampton marine consultancy helps the UK’s America’s Cup challenge

Published: 4 February 2020
Boat

Southampton’s Wolfson Unit for Marine Technology and Industrial Aerodynamics uses peak performance to help test the design of the boat that is being developed for the UK’s America’s Cup challenge entry.

The Wolfson Unit has a long history, dating back to the 1980s, of working with America’s Cup teams and has spent the last 18 months carrying out various computer simulations for INEOS TEAM UK who are designing the British entry for the 36th America’s Cup in 2021.

This history, together with access to one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers – Iridis 5 - meant the Wolfson Unit were in a perfect position to help when INEOS TEAM UK needed a large amount of computer simulations carried out in a short space of time.

However, the Iridis 5 machine is usually busy running hundreds of jobs for PhD students, researchers and commercial units, meaning the Wolfson Unit is limited in the number of simulations completed a day, and they needed to run at least eight times their typical productivity to meet INEOS TEAM UK’s requirements.

Dr Sandy Wright, Principal Research Engineer at the Wolfson Unit, said: “The only way we could achieve this was to utilise the whole supercomputer when the University was closed over the Christmas and New Year period.”

Sandy set about gaining priority access to Iridis 5 and over ten-days clocked up 1,000,000 computer hours and completed 5,000 runs in total – equating to approximately 114 years’ continual use of a standard desktop.

He said: “INEOS TEAM UK approached us asking for 5,000 computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to be carried out in a very tight timeframe. Our commercial expertise, combined with access to the University’s supercomputer Iridis 5, means we were one of only a few facilities in the UK that could provide that capability. However, it is a huge undertaking as each of these simulations takes about six hours of computing time on 32 processors.

“We knew we had the ability to meet the request, the only critical factor was privileged access to Iridis 5. Once we had gained that, the knowledge and the techniques we have built up over the years meant we could deliver the computer simulations within the deadline.”

America’s Cup challenge teams regularly use CFD to understand how forces and air flow are modelled around the boat, sails and crew. This allows them to optimise the performance of both the boat and the sailors and maximise their knowledge about how the craft rates against its opponents.

Previously, the Wolfson Unit has carried out wind tunnel testing, tank testing, as well as CFD modelling for various America’s Cup teams from the UK, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, the USA, Italy and France.

However, new race rules mean wind tunnel and towing tank testing are banned for this America’s Cup, so all boat design modelling has to be achieved via computer.

INEOS TEAM UK’s Chief Designer, Nick Holroyd commented: “The challenge to win the America’s Cup is a huge technical endeavour and we require a large number of computer simulations to cover all of the variables - including wind speed, wind angle, sail sheeting angle, sail shape, boat heel, boat speed, crew positions, rudder angle and boat trim.

“Partnerships like the Wolfson Unit provide a major boost with the results of their simulations feeding directly back into our sail design and aerodynamic package which enables the team to push the development of the race boat even further.”

The Wolfson Unit is based at the University of Southampton and undertakes a wide range of commercial CFD projects, including renewable energy devices, marine craft, and architectural wind environmental studies.

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